Palm for Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  “All this for Hong Kong flu?” she protested.

  “At your age,” he hinted delicately, and then, shrugging, “Why else are you here?”

  Mrs. Pollifax sensibly did not reply to this but it was exasperating to say the least. She repressed her crossness, however. She was waiting to ask him a question.

  “In the meantime,” he concluded, removing his stethoscope and placing it in his bag, “enjoy Montbrison. Walk in the gardens. Feel free to visit St. Gingolph, and over at Montreux there is the Castle Chillon, where Byron visited.” He closed his bag and stood up, saying to the nurse, “You will please schedule the tests?”

  Mrs. Pollifax also stood. “By the way,” she said casually, “you are certainly the one person who can tell me how Madame Parviz is today. She wasn’t well enough last night to see me.” When the doctor looked blank she said, “Hafez’s grandmother.”

  “Hafez?” he repeated, and turned to the nurse, who explained the question to him in French.

  “Oh, the Zabyan group,” said the doctor. “I know nothing about it, Madame Pollifax, they bring with them their own doctor.”

  Mrs. Pollifax sat down in astonishment. “You allow that? Isn’t it very unusual?”

  “Of this I do not approve,” he admitted with a shrug. “But it happens sometimes, it happens. In a Clinic like this certain adjustments are made, you understand? It is handled entirely by the Board of Directors.”

  “You don’t know why they’re here, then?”

  He turned with his hand on the doorknob. “I understand the woman is very old, very tired, she wishes to see Switzerland again but with no wish to be examined by foreign doctors. Good day, madame.”

  She nodded, scarcely aware of his departure. But this was very peculiar, she thought, frowning, and his statement, added to the reception given her last night by the Zabyans, threw an entirely different light on the situation. If no one ever saw the woman—“I must talk to Marcel,” she realized, and picked up the phone to order her breakfast.

  But when her breakfast arrived it was brought by a young apprentice waiter. Marcel, he said, was on late duty today and would not be in until after lunch. This was frustrating news, and Mrs. Pollifax found herself very cross about the odd communication system set up by Interpol. Still, she knew the hours Marcel kept, having seen him here at midnight. There was nothing to do but wait.

  She breakfasted on her balcony, only a little charmed today by the birds and the stillness. After breakfast she went down to the garden to sit in the sun.

  “I was utterly taken aback,” said Lady Palisbury, speaking to Court. They stood on the graveled path and her voice carried across the flower beds. “We breakfasted on the balcony as usual, John and I, and John had no sooner sat down in his chair when he winced and jumped up again. He said he felt as if he’d sat on a golf ball. And there it was, my diamond, buried where the two chair cushions met. It had been there all the time!”

  “Oh, Lady Palisbury, I’m so glad for you.”

  “My dear, you have no idea how glad I am for myself. John gave me that ring in 1940—”

  Several feet away, ensconced in the sun, Robin turned to Mrs. Pollifax and murmured, “I’m actually blushing. It’s downright embarrassing being such a benefactor.”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “Painful, too, I should imagine. A good deed shining in a dark world—”

  He groaned. “Please—spare me your clichés, and don’t try to reform me.”

  Mrs. Pollifax followed his gaze to Court, whose long, straight brown hair gleamed in the sun. She looked remarkably wholesome and healthy, her bright pink dress emphasizing her sun-tanned face, and Robin’s eyes were fixed upon her with hunger. “I may not have to,” she said with a smile. Beyond Court the doors swung open and a nurse pushed out the man in the wheelchair. She thought idly what a shuttered face he had, a cruel one, too. She had never felt that suffering necessarily ennobled people; it could but more frequently it didn’t. It depended on attitude. “But I notice that you didn’t pack up and bolt this morning,” she reminded Robin, “and you’re actually out of bed before noon.”

  “I decided to stay on a few days. You know, have a vacation—like honest people?” He succeeded in wresting his gaze from Court and flashed a wicked grin at Mrs. Pollifax. “Besides, if you leave the Clinic first—if I outstay you—”

  “It was a particularly virulent strain of flu,” she reminded him.

  “About that flu,” he said. “It reminds me that after I left you last night I began remembering things. That jewelry case of yours, for instance. I didn’t pick it up but I pushed it across the desk and I’ve never known a jewelry case to weigh so much. About ten pounds, I’d say.”

  “Perhaps that’s where I keep my genuine jewelry,” she told him pleasantly.

  Court was moving toward them across the lawn and Robin jumped to his feet. “Miss van Roelen,” he said happily. “I was wondering if you’d care to join me in a walk to the village before lunch.”

  Court looked at him with steady blue eyes. She hesitated and turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “I’d like to very much. The three of us?”

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. “I’m having tests this morning.”

  Court glanced helplessly at Robin and Mrs. Pollifax realized that she was actually very shy. She wondered, too, if the girl hadn’t sustained a few inner wounds recently that left her frightened of men. “But I’d certainly appreciate your bringing back four postcards for me,” she said briskly. “It would be so terribly kind of you.”

  Court looked relieved and persuaded. “Of course,” she said warmly. “Of course I will. Shall we go then?”

  “Four postcards,” Robin said gravely. He positively glowed with chivalry as he led her across the lawn, and Mrs. Pollifax, who had no need at all of postcards, saw them go with a sense of satisfaction. She began to look around the garden for Hafez but he had not appeared yet, and her roving glance caught the eye of the general sitting across the path from her and leaning on his cane. He bowed courteously.

  “Good morning,” she called.

  His reply was too low for her to hear, and she left her chair for the empty one beside him. “Mrs. Pollifax,” she told him, extending her hand.

  “General d’Estaing, madame.” His hand was dry and warm.

  “A beautiful morning. You are feeling well today?”

  He had surprising eyes in his strong pale face. They had remained alive and now they twinkled shrewdly in his lined face. “That is not a logical question to ask a very old man, madame. I have survived another day, that is all, neither triumphant nor particularly moved by the fact. I am, after all, eighty-nine.”

  “Eighty-nine!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.

  “The particular problem of being eighty-nine,” he continued, “is that one has time to reflect upon a well-lived life but no friends with which to share the sweep of perspective. Have you ever come near to death, madame?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Near enough.”

  “Then you know that its terrors are exaggerated,” he said simply.

  “I think I should mind the waiting,” she told him thoughtfully. “It must be rather like the last months of pregnancy, with no possible way to back out or change one’s mind.”

  “You mean the irrevocability,” he said, smiling. “Birth and death—no, we’ve no choice there.” His gaze looked out upon the garden reflectively. “These young people, I find it ironic that they are learning how to live while I am learning how to die.”

  “Do you wish you could tell them how to live?”

  He chuckled. “One cannot tell the young anything, madame.”

  She laughed. “Very true. General, in your work—I hear that you were head of the Sûreté—you learned a great deal about human nature?”

  “Too much,” he said dryly.

  She hesitated. “You have met, perhaps, with real evil?”

  “Evil,” he mused, and she saw his eyes flash beneath the heavy brows. “You ask a Frenchman tha
t, madame? I had the interesting experience once of meeting Hitler—”

  “Ah,” she breathed.

  He nodded. “He impressed me, madame—this man who sent millions of Jews to their death and changed the course of history—with his ordinariness. Success encouraged his madness, of course, but that was the thing, you see: he was so ordinary. This is what astonished and alarmed me, that evil can be so commonplace. It is not in the face or in the words but in the heart, in the intentions. In my experience I have found only one form of evil to leave its visible mark.”

  “And what is that?”

  “In general the act of murder leaves no mark on a man but I have found this is not true of the professional killer who murders more than once, and in cold blood. It is a curious fact that it shows in the eyes, madame, which I believe the poets call the windows of the soul. I have found the eyes of the habitual murderer to be completely empty. An interesting revenge by Nature, is it not?”

  “Indeed yes,” she murmured.

  “The soul can be annihilated, you see—one must not trifle with it.” He glanced at the nurse who had entered the garden bearing a tray of medicines and when she headed toward them he sighed. “Just as I thought, the medicine is for me. They must try to keep me alive a little longer, madame.”

  The nurse addressed him in French and they exchanged a few jokes before her eyes fell on Mrs. Pollifax. “Oh, but madame,” she cried, “you are the one they search for, it is time for the tests. You go, eh?”

  Mrs. Pollifax bid the general a good morning, and went.

  After lunch Mrs. Pollifax stationed herself in the garden to wait for Marcel. She chose the gazebo, because it was secluded and discouraged company, and she fortified herself with a paperback novel and a discarded International Herald Tribune that she had found in the library. The sun grew hotter and the shadows longer. Two of the younger waiters appeared and moved among the guests, taking orders, but it was a long time before Marcel appeared. When she saw him she stood up and waved. “Oh, garçon!” she called, summoning her newest French word.

  Marcel made his way cautiously toward her, his eyes wary. “Oui, madame?”

  With a smile pinned on her lips, and speaking through clenched teeth she said, “Are you a good actor, Marcel? I have to talk to you.”

  He grinned. “All Frenchmen are actors, madame.” He unfurled an order pad and held a pencil poised above it. “Now madame. I shall smile, you shall smile, and we can speak.”

  “It’s Madame Parviz again, Marcel. Have you any information yet?”

  “It was requested last night by phone, when I returned to the village, but the information will have to come from Zabya. There should be something by tomorrow morning.”

  She nodded. “But there’s more, Marcel. Did you know that none of the doctors have visited or examined her?”

  He looked surprised. “This I did not know.”

  “Dr. Lichtenstein told me. I asked. He said it was cleared by the Board of Directors, and he explained it by saying that Madame Parviz—or so he was told—is very old and wants no foreign doctors examining her. But she isn’t that old, Marcel, I saw her.”

  He looked doubtful. “Madame, I do not wish to be tactless but are you forgetting what we are here for? An invalid woman and a child, it seems most unlikely that they are involved—”

  “Of course they’re not,” she said impatiently, “but there is something very peculiar there. Can you get me a list of the Board of Directors?”

  He shrugged. “I have this already in my files, of course.”

  “I’m also curious, Marcel, about the man in the room across the hall from Madame Parviz. I should have asked you about him last night. He’s in a wheelchair, I see him in the garden and in the dining room. I’m wondering if he isn’t a member of their party, too.”

  Marcel sighed. “I can assure you that he is not, madame, because he did not arrive with them, he has been here for some time. Nor is he Zabyan.” He frowned. “Room number 153 …” He shook his head. “I do not remember his name without referring to my list but I can find out his name in half an hour.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could find out a great deal more.”

  He looked at her and smiled. Perhaps he found her amusing. “Very well, madame, I will do very thorough detective work on this man and by tonight I will have information for you, okay? But I would prefer better to hear something of Robin Burke-Jones, of whom I am most suspicious.”

  “And rightly so,” she said, smiling back at him. “Actually I can tell you a great deal about him, almost all of it, I think, reassuring. He’s—” She paused. Over Marcel’s shoulder she saw Robin making his way across the lawn to her. “So if you’ll make it crumpets with tea,” she said in a normal voice.

  He leaned foward. “I go off duty at midnight, madame. Can you meet me on the ground floor at that hour, by the elevator?”

  “I’ll be there. And lemon with the tea,” she added, lifting her voice.

  “And you can bring me a Scotch and soda,” said Robin, collapsing into the chair beside hers. “Do you know that walking is strictly for the birds?”

  “They fly,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax. “Are you just getting back from the village?”

  He nodded. “We lunched there. I have returned but not Court. Oh no, she’s still playing the organ in that old Anglican church by the café.” He shuddered. “The organ, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But how charming,” said Mrs. Pollifax, smiling at him. “What a gifted person she must be. What in particular bothers you about that?”

  “What bothers me is that she doesn’t even know I left.” In his indignation he was virtually gargling his words. “We stopped in the church on the way back, and the rector, or whoever he was, made conversation with us about the age of the church and its flying buttresses and then about music, and Court said she played and he begged her to try their new organ. She forgot about me,” he concluded in a strangled voice.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Yes, I thought you might find that a problem but I hoped not. She strikes me as being quite self-sufficient, you know.” In the silence that followed she added tranquilly, “I’ve heard it makes for the very best marriages, actually.”

  “What does?” he asked suspiciously. “Organ music?”

  “Self-sufficiency. So many marriages are parasitic, don’t you think? The one party living through the other. Such a tragic waste of potential.”

  He regarded her with exasperation. “Look, I’m not planning to marry her or anyone. In my profession can you even imagine the complication of a wife? All I ask is a decent show of interest. I’ve got money, I’m not bad looking, I’ve been around—”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Ego.”

  To her surprise he said humbly, “You really think it’s that?”

  “Yes, I do. You’re quite accustomed to having your own way, I imagine. Especially with women, isn’t that true?”

  “I suppose so,” he admitted forlornly.

  “What draws you to Court, if I may be so presumptuous?”

  “I’ve never met anyone more presumptuous.” He hesitated as Marcel brought them drinks on a tray, removed them to the table and withdrew. “She’s different,” Robin said scowling. “She’s little. Small, I mean. And cool but warm underneath. She needs caring for, you can see that at once.”

  “Oh at once,” agreed Mrs. Pollifax gravely.

  “But she doesn’t realize that. There’s a vulnerability about her—” He caught himself up, frowned and said briskly, “Of course she’s impossible. Do you realize that for the first eight days of her stay here she left her bed at five-thirty in the morning to walk? The girl’s obsessed, it’s unnatural.”

  Mrs. Pollifax considered him with sympathy. “There are people like that, you know. My neighbor at home, Miss Hartshorne, is one.” She said thoughtfully, “I think it arouses guilt feelings in the rest of us. Certainly Miss Hartshorne’s not very popular but,” she added loyally, “she’s ever so healthy.” />
  “Exactly,” said Robin. “And you called her Miss Hartshorne. She never married?”

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head.

  “Well then, you see?” He was triumphant. “That’s just what will happen to Court. She’s beautiful—breathtakingly lovely—and she’ll never marry.”

  Mrs. Pollifax beamed at him happily. “Then you needn’t worry about falling in love with her, need you? She’s no threat at all.”

  Robin glared at her. “You’re expecting me to be rational.”

  “Surely consistent?”

  “Consistent, rational, stable and well-adjusted?” He threw up his hands. “I give up.” His glance turned accusing. “You’re watching something, you’re not paying the slightest attention suddenly. Damn it, this certainly doesn’t seem to be my day for capturing anybody’s attention.”

  “I’m watching Hafez,” she told him. “He’s up on the third-floor balcony outside his room. He hasn’t been outside at all today and I’ve been wondering why.”

  “He really continues to trouble you?” asked Robin.

  “Yes.” She hesitated and then—it scarcely betrayed any secrets—she added, “I tried to pay a call on his grandmother last evening to look over the situation.”

  “Breathing fire, I suppose, and looking very stern, and she told you it was none of your business?”

  Mrs. Pollifax put down her cup of tea and shook her head. “I caught only a glimpse of her in bed and then I was literally carried out of the room by two men of the party.”

  “Strong-arm stuff, eh?”

  She realized that this was exactly how it had struck her at the time; it was the sickroom atmosphere that clouded her perceptions and created doubt. “Yes, and I intend to find out why.”

  He grinned. “I’ll bet you will, too.”

  “Hello!” called Court, approaching them and looking radiant. “I’ve been playing the organ all this time, it’s been delightful.”

  “Yes,” said Robin, “I know.”